Capture Your Grief 2015 Days 16-20

Day 16. Creative Grief – When you lose a baby, especially one you didn’t get to keep for very long, you don’t have many memories or tangible things to hold onto so you have to make your own. We don’t have anything Aneurin wore and the things we had at home for him didn’t quite feel like his yet. I do have a little hat we took to the hospital which he didn’t end up wearing that I found in the bag a few weeks ago and now keep in my bedside table. It sounds odd but just knowing it was in the same room as him physically makes it more special than any other hat we had ready for him. We’ve had to get creative in ways to feel close to him. I have some lovely jewellery and artwork and once I’m 6 months post birth I’ll be getting a tattoo with him in mind. I think I’d like some sweet peas (we put a bunch from my mother in law’s garden on his casket) but I’m not 100% sure yet. For a while I was a bit concerned about being in danger of almost creating a shrine for him. Doing that always seemed a bit unhealthy to me but now I completely understand why it happens. At the moment I have a huge sense of wanting a physical place to feel close to Aneurin but because he was cremated we don’t have a grave to visit. We don’t have the luxury of having bits of his spread across the house like we would if he was here and we don’t have as much as we’d like so having his memory box, photo album and little bits and bobs in one place is lovely. Sometimes it can feel a bit like all we want to do is immerse ourselves in it and grasp at what little we have of him and for the time being this is what we need to do. We need to write his name in the sand and doodle it on bits of paper. We need to be able to touch a piece of jewellery and feel like it connects us to him. We need to do whatever we can to get five more minutes with our lovely little Pea. One thing I’m learning about grief is that there’s no right or wrong and you have to do whatever you need to do to go through it.

Day 17. Secondary Losses – I have lost so much more than my son. I’ve lost the future we had planned for, the innocence I had surrounding pregnancy, my naivety in being a decent person and so much more. I know things I don’t want to; babies get sick, they die and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. I know that nobody is immune to tragedy no matter how much of a good person you are or what you’ve already been through. Anything can happen and you can’t control it.

The biggest secondary loss though is myself. I don’t know who I am or where I fit anymore. I was pregnant me for 8 wonderful months and was so excited and ready to be mummy me. Becoming a parent even if you lose your child changes you on a soul level. I cannot go back to the person I was before Aneurin but I don’t know who I am without him. Navigating your way through life after such a loss is so tough because you’re forced to create an entirely new version of normal for yourself. I very much feel as if I’m just wandering at the minute with no direction at all and it’s terrifying.

Day 18. Seasons and Symbols – Summer will always remind me of Aneurin. I think I spent most of June and July on the sofa in my knickers with fans pointed at me! I always said I’d never want to be heavily pregnant in the middle of summer but such is life! This time of year weighs heavy on my mind because I was so looking forward to going for crunchy leafed Autumn walks and conker picking in years to come. We had also put so much focus on Christmas because we knew Aneurin would be out of neonatal care and home by then so the next couple of months are going to be tough. As for symbols there are a few things that I associate with our little Pea. Marmite because I had such a strong craving when I was pregnant and it’s all I ate for weeks! Sweet peas because he was our sweet little pea. White feathers because they’re meant to symbolise little angel wings. As I said in my creative grief post you find meaning and comfort in anything you can when you lose your child and that’s fine. It opens you up to a whole new world of meaning.

Day 19. Music – The most significant bit of music I associate with Aneurin is Made Up Love Song #43 by Guillemots. I was at a daycare appointment one day listening to my iPod when it came on and he would not stop dancing around in my belly. If I stopped playing it he stopped and as soon as I hit play he would start moving again! It was so wonderful, especially when I listened to the words. It opens with ‘I love you through sparks and shining dragons I do’ and there’s a line in it that says ‘the best things come from nowhere’ and it made me well up because we didn’t expect Aneurin but he was truly the greatest thing that ever happened to us. After he was born Haydn got in bed with me whilst I was holding him and we played it and wept. It was such a beautiful but bittersweet moment. For days after the words ran round my head and I would wake up knowing I had dreamt about the song. We haven’t been able to listen to it since but I hope I can one day because it’s really lovely and plinky plinky.

Day 20. Forgiveness & Humanity – We’ve been quite lucky in that few people have said inappropriate or insensitive things to us in regards to losing Aneurin. I try my very hardest to forgive people who say upsetting things because it’s impossible to know what to say when someone’s child has died and I know people don’t meant to be malicious.

What I am struggling to forgive though is people who have completely turned their backs on us, especially family because Aneurin was their family too. Like I said, I know it’s difficult to know what to say but I would much rather someone said to me ‘I wanted to say something to you but I don’t know what’ than they just ignored me. Peoples reaction of wanting to brush something difficult or unpleasant under the carpet and pretend it isn’t happening is one of the worst parts of humanity for me. It alienates people and causes such deep emotional damage. We are all human, we all feel and those feelings can be both beautiful and hideous but we need to be allowed to feel them. Aneurin is and will always be our first child. There’s no brushing that under the carpet.